Cry For Me
by peroxidepest17
Summary: When Shuichi cries, Yuki thinks tears are power.


**Title:** Cry For Me  
**Author:** Celeste  
**Feedback:** (yes!) Tryin' to kill the boredom and see if I can write something un-Bleach. ; ;  
**Universe:** Gravitation  
**Pairing:** YukixShuichi  
**Rating:** PG  
**Time:** 2.53 (minor edits)  
**Word count:** 2,668  
**Summary:** When Shuichi cries, Yuki thinks tears are power.  
**Dedication:** tomomichi- when you poke me to write something in a certain universe be prepared for the consequences. --;;  
**A/N:** Just writing spontaneously… no pre-meditation on this one, so I don't know what I'm going to end up with. Hopefully not…crap. --;; Here goes nothing.  
**A/N 2: **Wow. Second person and sap all over the place on this one, huh? Watch out for the OOC, but like I said above, spontaneous writing always has mixed results with me, so you know, take this as you will. Also, warnings for melodrama and the world's WORST run on sentences. But other than that, it was a pretty easy-going write that didn't give me too much trouble, and I suppose I can at least be thankful for that. I don't know how clear everything is because of that, but I just needed a stress free day and this is what resulted from it. Ah, Gravitation, you're always a great fallback universe to write in.  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine. But I dream. I dream sometimes.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

Tears are a type of power, you think. It's a way of showing that you've got some control over someone else, that you can take someone's heart in the palm of your hand and carry it like treasure or crush it like garbage, depending on how you feel at any one particular moment. 

So when Shuichi cries because of you, you know it's because you have that power. All it takes is one word, and you can get him to light up the room with his smile or you can destroy him just as fast, break him down into nothing but a bundle of choked sobs and surprised tears, hurt and questioning and too in love with you to see that he could do so much better in one determined heartbeat if he so chose to.

And for a long time, those tears make you feel strong, because when everything else in your life isn't working like you want it to, when your own emotions and memories feel like they're tearing you apart without giving you any say in the matter, you know that you can turn to Shuichi and murmur just the right horrible thing into his ear to cause that hopeless boy to cry like it's magic. For a long time, it's something that you turn to when you've got nothing else, because you know there's something sick about yourself that needs to be able to control _something_, to have power over something when everything else falls apart inside and around you.

It's the easy thing to do when you feel like life is out of control, just turning to him because he's always there. And making him cry reminds you that you do have an effect on the world around you, that if you want, you can destroy someone to make them feel just as destroyed as you do.

So there you are, trying to bring him down to your own level because you can, he's given you that power after all, and you latch on to whatever you can get your hands on because you've had so little in your own life before him.

He always cries just like you want him to, and for a long time it makes you feel strong. It makes a part of you feel terrible all the same, but it's the sensation of control that matters in the long run, and he keeps coming back for more anyway, which makes the whole thing partly his own fault too.

He keeps coming back even when you've cut him down to a hundred pieces on your living room floor, left him curled up around his pillow on the couch with puffy eyes and a runny nose, calling your name or calling you names and wiping his cheeks pathetically with the back of one small hand.

And for a long time, that makes you feel powerful, though there's always that niggling feeling in the back of your mind that maybe he won't be there when you wake up, that maybe this time was the time that was one time too many and that he'll suddenly figure out that he can do better in a heartbeat, if he so chooses. Part of you wonders after you've left him sobbing in the other room, if he'll still be there to look up at you and tell you he loves you when you return, or if he'll be gone instead, if he'll pick up and leave and strip you of the only thing you feel like you've had any control over for a long time.

Tears are power. You know that. Kitazawa taught you that well enough when you were young, showed you in his lonely New York apartment how to play the game so that you come out on top every time. Tears mean that you have a hold over someone's heart and you can cherish it against your chest or crush it in your hand whenever you want to. Tears mean that there's something in your life that you have authority over, someone else out there that you can control when you feel like you're powerless to influence anything else in the world.

But leaving is power too, and you know that that's something Shuichi will always have over you.

And you wonder, after all the times you've asserted your control over him, why he hasn't tried to do the same with you.

He's never left, no matter how many hundreds of times you've made him cry. He's never tried to play his own power card with you as horrible as you've been, and it confuses you because that's what people are supposed to do to each other, isn't it? They play one game after another to see who ends up in charge in the end, to see whose heart winds up in whose hands after the struggle is done.

You're good at those games because you lost the hard way once and you're determined not to lose again. It's why you make him cry. It means you win, it means you're the one with power over him.

It means that you finally have control over something in your life.

Except you begin to wonder after a while, because the threat of losing that foothold is always _there _but never _used_ and you don't know what's wrong with Shuichi. He has to know it's there, but he comes back for more every time and you're dumbfounded because this isn't the way the game is played, is it? And if he never plays his cards, you'll never know if your hand is better than his. You'll never know who wins. And you play to win, you play to control. It's all you know really, and when Shuichi doesn't pull every stop he's got to play the same way, you're suddenly too confused to worry about whether you're still in the lead or not.

And one day, after all that confusion and anxiety's built up too high to keep from toppling, you suddenly feel it break somewhere inside of you. It's on a day when you've made him cry again, when he's standing in front of you looking down at the floor and there's a stream of crystal salt-water pouring from his too-large eyes, snot on his nose and a hurt, confused flush on his face as he tries futilely to wipe the evidence of your power over him from his face with the palms of his small hands.

You feel something break inside of you when you look at him at that moment, because you've struggled and struggled to find a way for your lover to make sense to you in your mind, to fit into the way your world has always worked, and even after all that searching there's _nothing _you can think of that explains why he'd be willing to take this shit from you when you both know he could walk out that door and do better in one determined heartbeat.

It doesn't make sense at all, and you find yourself grabbing him suddenly in the middle of his crying fit and wrapping your arms around him as tight as you can. You bury your face into his hair and while you don't cry yourself, you feel your eyes get a little bit wet and it makes you angry, for him and for you, when you do. You ask him in a strained voice why he's so stupid as the two of you stand there embracing, with him still crying silently as he buries his nose into the front of your shirt and undoubtedly covers it in snot. You hug him tighter anyway and keep asking why he puts up with so much shit when the both of you know he could do better two steps out that door and one determined heartbeat later.

His little arms wrap around you in return and he answers in that lovely, if wavering voice of his, that you should _know_ by now. You should _know_ why he's so stupid and if you don't already, then you're stupid too and maybe the two of you deserve each other for that, because you two can both be such idiots sometimes and not know why.

Before you know it, a strangled, "I'm sorry. I know. I _know_," comes out of your mouth without you thinking about it, and he stands up on his tiptoes and rests his wet cheek against the side of your throat as you take the majority of his weight into your arms and let him lean against you.

The two of you stay like that for a little while and eventually his sniffles slow down and his breathing returns to normal. Before long, you can't feel any more of those powerful tears of his trickling down the side of your neck, but you continue to instinctively rub small circles against his back long after he's stopped crying anyway.

An eternity later, he pulls back a little, and though his cheeks are wet and his eyes are still a little puffy, he offers a watery, awkward smile at you all the same, reaching up with one of those precious small hands to touch the side of your face, looking up at you like you've never made him cry a day in his life.

He forgives you. Just like that.

He forgives you for playing your power games with him, forgives you for your need to make him cry for no other reason than you can.

He smiles up at you and touches your face and forgives you like it's nothing.

Tears are power. You know that.

But suddenly, suddenly you discover that the power to stop those tears is something else altogether.

You discover that taking Shuichi's face in your hands and brushing the moisture from his cheeks with your thumbs, sweeping up the drops that gather along his jaw with your tongue or kissing his wet eyes dry, is a different sort of control than the one you've known of all your life, and you think that turning Shuichi's sniffles into hopeful little smiles is a strange new sort of strength that you've never quite felt before, something that still makes you feel powerful and at the same time, not quite as terrible as you're used to feeling after you've made him cry.

Tears are power. Kitazawa taught you that many years ago, in a lonely New York apartment with two other strangers when you were young and naive, surrounded by the smell of alcohol and fear.

He showed you then that when you can make someone else cry it's a kind of control you have over that other person, a sign that you're winning the game. It's the way you've been playing for as long as you can remember, because you've lost once before and when you remember how that felt, you don't ever want to lose again.

For a long time, you thought that Shuichi's tears were power. And in a way, you were right.

But you've suddenly discovered a different sort of power altogether, and some time later, when Shuichi's still there despite everything you've done to him and he _still _hasn't used that trump card of his even once, you think that maybe you learned the wrong rules the first time around, when you were trying to figure out how to play the game of life.

Because as powerful as you felt back in the days when you made Shuichi cry, now, you think the way he laughs when you wrap him up in your arms or the way he smiles at you when you make love is a different sort of power altogether.

Tears are power, and no matter how differently you may look at the game now, that's a fact that will never change.

Except now that power's been completely turned back against you, and you find that every time you see him cry he suddenly becomes the one in control as you fall all over yourself trying to get him to stop, to make him laugh or smile at you, to find out what's wrong, to make it better or distract him or do whatever it takes to dry those precious, too-large eyes.

It's taken some time, but it seems like Shuichi's finally teaching you how to play the game the right way.

And while you still can't figure out how these new rules decide on a winner exactly, you're having too much fun to care who's in the lead anyway.

Because having the power to make Shuichi's eyes go big with awe and love is a completely different way of playing the same game. It's given you more power than any amount of making him cry ever did in the past, and slowly, you're learning that you feel a thousand times better when you make him laugh than when you make him cry.

Which isn't to say everything's perfect now, because when it involves the two of you, it's not and probably never will be. Because two idiots in love just don't work that way, don't lend themselves to perfection. Shuichi still cries sometimes, and you're the reason more often than not, because there are still times when you're stretched too thin and it feels like the world is against you. So without thinking, you take it out on the nearest available target on the worst of the bad days, and it's always him. He's always the nearest available target because he's always there. And so he still cries sometimes because of that, because you have the power to do that to him and you'll _always_ have the power to do that to him as long as he decides that he still loves you.

You don't like that you still do it, but you think it's something inevitable when life involves two idiots in love, particularly him and especially you.

So sometimes you make him cry, though when you do now, you know it's because you're an asshole and not because there's some sort of control game you're playing behind his back, the one you learned in a quiet New York apartment one fateful night many years ago.

Now, when you make him cry it's because you're an asshole and the power of his tears drills that into your head time and time again, until you have him wrapped up in your arms with your hands on his face, telling him that you're an asshole and he shouldn't let such an asshole make him cry like this because they both know that the moment he wants to, he can walk out the door and find something better in one determined heartbeat.

He always manages a small smile for you when you tell him that, when you kiss the tears from his eyes and brush the moisture from his cheeks. And then he lets out a rough sound of mirth as he hugs you back and tells you that you _are_ an asshole, but that he doesn't think he'll find a better one no matter how many determined heartbeats he can muster outside the door.

You taste salt on your tongue as you hold him against you and the two of you chuckle pathetically together while you think about that for a moment, he leaning against you and you with your fingertips wet on his face, cupping his cheeks in your hands before you sigh quietly and bend to touch your forehead to his, thanking him with all your heart.

And it's at times like these when you don't mind that his snot is all over the front of your shirt and he's calling you names, because it's at times like these when you think to yourself that even though tears will always be a sort of power, for Shuichi, you're the only one that has the power to make them stop.

You're beginning to believe that maybe it's the only power you really need.

**END**


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